NEWS

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biomes 0.9.5

• The example dataset is now bombacoideae_occurrences: 17,030 occurrence records of 185 Bombacoideae species (Zizka et al. 2020), the worked example of the companion paper. It is used in the README, the vignettes and all function examples; the previous dataset biomes_example has been removed.
• biomes_information gains the column biome_definition (climate, vegetation, land_cover, ecoregion, integrative, anthropogenic); the definition argument of biomes_rank(), biomes_visualise() and biomes_full(scheme = ) ranks within one biome definition. Scheme 6 (Zhang et al. 2017, climate and NDVI clustering) is integrative.
• biomes_rank(): the criterion is called effective_biomes (columns effective_biomes_raw / _scaled); tiebreaker = "biomes". The ranking uses exactly the three criteria of the companion paper (coverage, effective_biomes, granularity), min-max rescaled and averaged with equal weights; the experimental criteria evenness, informativeness and agreement and the scaling argument have been removed. A criterion without variation among the compared schemes is left out of the composite (attribute criteria_used), and a single compared scheme gets no composite score (NA) but is still returned as best_scheme.
• biomes_visualise(): the rank panel labels schemes as 25 (Ramankutty & Foley, 1999), shows all compared schemes (or the top_n best) on one 0 to 1 axis (the rescaled criterion values that enter the composite score; axis titles carry the symbols of the paper, Coverage (C), Effective biomes (E), Granularity (G)) and outlines the best composite score and the best value of each criterion in red; panels carry left-aligned titles with the panel letter and the reference of the chosen scheme (titles); the map legend lists biome names only (legend_counts = FALSE); the barplot uses the map colours per biome, grey for off-map records, and thousands separators.
• Maintainer e-mail updated.

biomes 0.9.4 (2026-08-31)

• CRAN resubmission addressing reviewer comments.

biomes 0.9.3

• Initial CRAN submission.
• Provides raster layers of 31 global biome schemes from Fischer et al. (2022, Global Ecology and Biogeography 31(11): 2172-2183) at 10 x 10 km resolution globally.
• Terminology: schemes are addressed by their biome scheme number (1-31). The scheme argument of biomes_classify(), biomes_rank(), biomes_visualise() and biomes_full() replaces the former layer argument; biomes_rank() returns the columns scheme/scheme_name and the attribute best_scheme; biomes_tab() returns a scheme column; biomes_information uses the column scheme_number.
• Core functions: biomes_classify() (assign occurrence records to biome classes), biomes_rank() (rank schemes by coverage, effective number of classes, and granularity), biomes_tab() (tabulate records per biome class), biomes_visualise() (combined figure with rank, map and barplot panels, selectable via panels), biomes_full() (one-call wrapper), biomes_get() (load the raster stack), biomes_info() (per-scheme metadata), biomes_occ() (optional GBIF download with coordinate cleaning).
• biomes_visualise() now reproduces the full workflow figure: the rank panel shows the composite score plus the raw criteria it averages (coverage, effective classes, granularity), the map panel shows the occurrence map (with an adaptive legend), and the barplot panel shows records and species per biome class back-to-back with centred labels. With combine = FALSE the individual panels are returned as a named list instead of one lettered figure. The former biomes_show_rank() has been removed (its ranking view is the rank panel).
• biomes_full(): the scheme argument also accepts a scheme type ("climate", "vegetation", "land_cover", "ecoregion", "integrative", "anthropogenic") to pick the best-fitting scheme within that group, in addition to an integer 1:31 and "best". A new plot argument controls which figure(s) are built: "none" (default, no figure, the fastest option), "all" (the combined lettered figure in $plot), or a subset of c("rank", "map", "barplot") (returned individually, without panel letters, in $rank, $map and $barplot).
• The ~36 MB biome raster stack is not bundled inside the package. It is hosted as a GitHub release asset and downloaded once into a per-user cache directory (tools::R_user_dir()) on first use; biomes_download() performs (or refreshes) this download explicitly. This keeps the installed package well under CRAN's size limit.
• Four vignettes follow the four-step workflow (step1- .. step4-): (1) assembling occurrence records and biome schemes, (2) choosing a biome scheme, (3) occurrences-to-biome classification, and (4) output and visualisation.